Select language, root password and when I press F11 to Install, it gives the following error:

This program has encountered an error: partedUtil failed with message: Error: Can’t have a a partition outside the disk! Unable to read partition table for device

VMware Knowledge Base Article “Formatting LUN as VMFS 5 fails with the error: Can’t have a partition outside the disk! (2082806)” suggests that the Device/LUN already has a partition configured. To resolve this issue, you need to create a normal MS-DOS partition (I guess ANY partition that can be deleted by the Installer) on the affected disks using partedUtil utility. There is no need to map/attach the LUN/SD to another host, you can press ALT-F1, open the DCUI and run partedUtil utility. Unfortunately, it did not work for me.

The workaround is to install VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 Update 1 and then either upgrade the host with vCenter Update Manager or install install ESXi 5.5 Update 2 for a clean installation.

How do you reformat the SD cards back to where it has SCU, HUU, Drivers and HV partitions? I thought “reset partition defaults” would do the deed and oops, it wipes the sd card wto contain only the larger 29GB HV. I have not found a link yet. Considering a call to cisco tac next. Thanks

Get yourself a copy of the free gparted-live iso. map it to the host and boot with it. Select”enter the command line prompt” the run the following. ‘lsblk’ will list the available devices the flexflash card will normally be “sdd” then run the following ‘parted /dev/sdd mklabel msdos’ then run the lsblk command again to check it has worked. You should have no partitions. Mount you vsphere iso and reboot and you’re good to install.

Reformatting with Gparted worked for me on my UCS blades, thanks for the suggestion! In UCS Manager the “Format FlexFlash” button was always grayed out. Gparted is a great tool, and in the past I’ve also used the Linux SystemRescueCD for blade server tasks also, works great!

I would like to say thank you too. Nay Lin Oo solution worked for me too. I was trying to install esxi6.5 and kept on failing with this error. I am also running CIMC 3.03. Erasing the virtual drive and enabling it again got it working. The only thing that I find annoying is that the flex flash takes a long time in the beginning to fully load. and nothing tells you that the drive is enabled. Either the host can see it or it can’t.